Clare Malone

Clare Malone is a freelance writer and member of the editorial staff of The New Yorker.Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, The Daily Beast, Slate, Bloomberg View, and Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. She is a former Prospect web editor.

Recent Articles

To say that Mitt Romney has a "Richie Rich" image problem might just be the political understatement of the century; there is the Romney-residence “car elevator,” Ann’s dressage horses, the bevy of offshore bank accounts, and the fact that some of his dearest friends own NASCAR teams. It ain’t the best time in American history to ooze money from all your orifices, but if you’re going to run for public office while doing so, you might at least desist with the robotic consultant-speak. But let’s face it, Mitt’s unlikely to change his marble-mouthed ways any time soon (and he can kiss that bid for mayor of the West Bank goodbye), so the Romney campaign needs to start leveraging their guy’s real strengths in order to gain some likeability points; his face, his family, and not speaking in public. Enter Instagram. Romney is perfect for the social media photo-sharing app; he should be seen, not heard. Those kind eyes, that strong jaw—who wouldn’t want to hand over the nuclear codes to a face...

This year marks the first time that the Olympics will feature women’s boxing, news that heartens feminists and strikes fear in the hearts of men made in the mold of Jennifer Lopez’s (fictional) abusive husband in Enough . One would think that female competition in a blood sport like boxing would mean that we’d gotten a smidge closer to the elusive equality of the sexes—and in some ways, we have—but the recent controversy over what women should wear while boxing shows we’re not quite there yet. Late last year, the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA), the sport’s governing body, recommended that female boxers wear skirts in the ring in order to distinguish them from their male counterparts. Because upper body toning exercises (like, for example, repeatedly punching something) make an athletic woman’s breasts smaller, the AIBA felt something needed to be done to alert the world to the fact that the fiercely sparring athletes in the ring were ladies. Hence the skirts...

A single line in Sally Ride’s obituary has caused a lot of fuss over the last day—the fact that she spent the last 27 years of her life with another woman. It’s a bit of a shame that the buzz of the public revelation has taken away from what it seems Dr. Ride would have preferred her legacy to be: pushing young women into careers in math and science. It doesn’t appear that Ride’s sexuality was a secret to those who knew her, just to the rest of us, the ones who knew her only as the trim woman in a NASA jumpsuit, sporting a soft halo of '80s hair. That’s exactly what she was to me as a little girl, a name and a picture in a history book: the first American woman in space. Firm evidence that we had been there, done that. Ride embraced that legacy, starting a company later in life that provided materials to make the teaching of science more accessible to young students. She also spoke out about the problem of peer pressure and norms of socialization that led girls away from studying math...

Yesterday, the NCAA announced the sanctions it would impose on the Penn State football program after an independent investigation found university administrators—including football coach Joe Paterno—had covered up instances of child rape and systematic sexual abuse by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The school is being fined $60 million—the approximate amount of its annual revenues from football—as well as being stripped of its titles and wins for 14 years. Some have questioned whether the broad scope of the sanctions, which punish players who may have had no knowledge of the abuse, is fair. The Prospect 's Monica Potts and Clare Malone debate the issue. Clare Malone : I think that the NCAA went too far in their efforts at collective punishment. Mine is something like the "sins of the father" argument—why are we punishing players (past and present) for the gross mistakes of the coaching staff and the school administration? Monica Potts: I don't view it as punishing the players, per se...

Elections, like baseball, are a simple game; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains. The rules are fairly intuitive to Americans from an early age. You’ve got your primaries, where the family engages in rousing infighting, and then the general election, where the guy or gal with the best power suit and tasteful red accessories wins. You vote for one candidate and get the hell out. The plebs always get stickers, and the senior citizens running the polls are guaranteed to be real pieces of work. It is democracy as the ancient Athenians must have imagined—only in their wildest dreams. But could there be another way to do it? Indeed. The fact is, there is more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to voting. Without further ado, we present some different flavors of democracy in action. What the heck is Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)? Also sporting the moniker “ranked choice voting” (catchy, eh?), this mode of voting is all about "win, place, show." Voters are given...